The Biden Legacy

Joe Biden Projected Weakness on The World Stage, Gave US Bidenomics, And Opened our Southern Border.

As January 20th approaches (for me it can’t come soon enough) and Joe Biden leaves office the media has already started the process of judging his presidency. Let the spin begin, I guess that is natural.

As I recall Joe Biden ran on such puerile platitudes such as “Saving America’s soul”, and a return to “normalcy”, and promising a divided country that he’d be a “uniter”. But towards the end of his term old sleepy Joe, let it slip; he suggested that Trump needed to be locked up and that Trump’s supporters were “garbage.” Out of frustration perhaps he lost his cool, but it seems the media missed it, the early reviews are in, and I couldn’t help but notice that the talking heads among the crumbling legacy media for the most part seem pleased with Biden. They are declaring mission accomplished on the Biden Presidency.

Well, I for one do think it is sad that the America people didn’t get the chance to vote Biden out of office and make no mistake they would have in a Carter or Dukakis like landslide. Biden avoiding the election, his fate, is truly unfair to democracy and history. He escaped the hangman’s noose. Had the voters been given the opportunity to give a verdict on the Biden Presidency he would have lost big, bigger than Harris. Unlike Harris, Biden would have lost New Jersey and Virginia as well. The only states he would have won are the deep blue ones. And such a landslide would have sealed his fate forever as a failed President along the lines of Jimmy Carter, and Herbert Hoover. It would have been harder in the future for community college professors and schoolteachers to claim that Joe Biden was a good President.

Ironically, for all their talk about democracy, Democrats pulled the plug on old Joe because they knew he’d lose in a landslide. But Biden ran and won the primaries; he earned the delegates. So much for letting the people decide. Oh well.

As for Biden’s legacy, let me first say that I believe that fifty years from now when historians take another look at Biden’s time in the Oval Office the main unanswered questions will center on his decision to seek reelection. In fact, I think most historians will be baffled by it.

His decision to break his promise and forgo passing the torch to a younger Democrat goes to the issues of his cognitive decline, the control of his advisors, the information he was getting, his understanding of the mood of the country, his political instincts and his views of his Vice President. Someone he was probably told to pick.

Biden had been in Washington long enough to know that the Presidency is even more than a full-time job. It is very tough and demanding, it may very well be the toughest job in the world. Biden knew he was old, he knew he had trouble answering basic questions, he knew he had to avoid the press otherwise his decline would be noticeable, he knew all his events had to be tightly controlled, and he knew that his work schedule was the lightest of any President’s since Calvin Coolidge’s, and in fairness to Silent Cal, it probably was even lighter, so light in fact that it makes Silent Cal look like a workaholic by comparison.

At the very least Biden must have realized that he was mentally slipping, this must have occurred to him by like 2015, and it no doubt accelerated greatly by 2021. He had to have known that he was deep into the late stages of a real cognitive decline. Already working part time in the first term; did he not realize that in a second term he would not be able to work as hard, that due to father time he would have to slow down. Instead of 10-4 Tuesday through Thursday, Biden had to realize that he would no longer be able to put in such long hours in a possible second term. Yet he still intended on running for reelection. That I find remarkable, and I think historians will as well.

How on earth could he have believed that he was capable of handling the workload or even able to complete four more years. How could he believe that he was up for it? Did Jill Biden or Hunter convince him that he was still up to it? I don’t think that there is a single American who believes that the President of the United States can work so little hours and keep the country safe. For him to run for reelection seems completely reckless, selfish and delusional.

The other reason it is hard to believe that Biden decided to run for reelection deals with the political reality. A person with a sound mind would realize that they probably aren’t going to win, and that for the good of their party they need to give someone else a chance. But when confronted with the challenging situation Biden simply said, “I don’t believe in polls.” Really? He is a career politician, and he doesn’t believe in polls.

In 2023, Joe Biden’s approval rating was at historic lows, and his disproval was at historic highs. Americans overwhelmingly believed that we were headed in the wrong direction. Even most Democrats didn’t want Biden to run for reelection. And by the second half of 2023, Trump overtook Biden in the polls. Trump never lost that lead. Did Biden really think he could get reelected. Sure, Biden may have thought he had a case for his reelection, but he had to know his limits. He knew that he had trouble doing interviews, and he knew he had little physical stamina for a hard campaign. It would have been impossible for him to mount a vigorous campaign. He had to have known the challenges since at least 2023. Yet he decided to run anyway. Joe Biden cost his party the White House.

I think that Biden will go down as one of the worst Presidents of all time, and perhaps the worst of my lifetime. I think his legacy will be shaped by four things.

Joe Biden used to brag that he was the first Senator to endorse Jimmy Carter for President in 1976. I think that is fitting because I believe Biden’s one term is very reminiscent of Carter’s term. Like Carter Biden projected weakness on the world stage and the world is now a mess because of it. First it was our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. We pulled out our troops first and left our fellow Americans and Afghani allies behind. We gave up the more secure Bagram Airforce base. It is now left open for the Chinese. We left hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment behind which the Taliban took. The world watched and no doubt rightfully concluded that Biden was weak, indecisive and incompetent. Shortly into the Biden administration Putin invaded Ukraine, he didn’t fear Biden in the least. He didn’t invade on Trump’s watch.

The middle east blew up on Biden’s watch. In April of 2024 he was asked by a reporter about the possibility that Iran would attack Israel and was asked what message he had for Iran. Biden, squinting like David Puddy from the old Seinfeld show, and with his mouth slightly agape, replied barely audible in his old man voice, “Don’t, don’t.” In October Iran hit Israel. Fortunately, the bombing was ineffective. Biden urged Israel not to retaliate, saying they should just “Take the win.”

Another part of the Biden legacy would be the open border. Once he took office Biden sign a series of executive orders undoing the work that Trump did to secure our border. Biden let millions of migrants in, even those that we knew had criminal records. And many who couldn’t get to the border he flew in. Biden got rid of the Trump remain in Mexico policy. We brought in 10 to 12 million poor migrants. Where would they live, how would they support themselves, what would they do here while waiting 10 years for a hearing? Biden never seemed to have thought about those questions.

I have no doubt that a couple years into his administration Biden realized that undoing the Trump policies was a mistake, but for political reasons he couldn’t admit it. He couldn’t return to the Trump border policies because that would be an admission that Trump was right. And that could be used against him in a campaign. So, Biden just allowed an invasion into our country. He put politics before the nation’s interest. He kept the open border because to close it would hand Trump a win.

The other Biden legacy would be inflation. He inherited inflation under 2 percent. It spiked and after four years is still higher today than it was when he took over. He is responsible, and if he got all the spending he wanted inflation would have been much worse. But he spent enough on the American Rescue Act to cause high inflation. There was no need for the American Rescue Act. Biden inherited the covid vaccine, the economy was opening up, the economy would have taken off without Federal action. No need for all the spending. The act did two things it added to our debt and caused inflation.

Finally, I would say his legacy was that of a divisive figure. A divider. He called Republicans extremists, claimed that Georgia was trying to reimpose Jim crow, called Trump’s supporters “Garbage” turned the FBI on parents who spoke up at school board meetings. And had his Justice Department prosecute his opponent former President Trump. A first in American history.

Biden will be leaving soon. For this we should all be happy.